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Holding bottle

This isn't about solids, but it is about feeding...

Is it just my dd, or are there any other primarily breastfed babies who can't give themselves their own bottle at 9 months? My dd probably got one bottle per week until she started day care a couple of months ago, and now she gets two bottles a day when she is there and nurses the rest of the time. She likes to play with the bottle, watch the liquid move around. We're trying to get her to hold the sippy cup by herself.

Re: Holding bottle

You are definately not alone. My ddis also 9 months and won't take a bottle but I have been working on the sippy for what seems like forever. She does OCCASIONALLY tip it back and get a drink but for the most part she just chews on the spout. I wouldn't worry. She will get it. It's just completely different from the way they normally get their food.

Re: Holding bottle

What type of sippy cup are you using? Am I understanding this correctly, you have BM in a sippy cup right? I would suggest trying an "Avent" sippy cup as it is kind of somewhere between a bottle and a sippy cup. Here's a link to see the cup. You can even use the Avent nipples on this cup as it's interchangable. http://www.aventamerica.com/products...eeding_cup.asp

Re: Holding bottle

Re: holding their own bottle... I do think its totally normal for an exclusively breastfed baby to not want to hold their own bottle. Breastfeeding involves alot of comfort and snuggling, and baby doesn't have to hold the breast up to do it. Bottle propping is dangerous, and should never be done anyway, so no matter what age baby is, baby should probably be held with someone else holding baby and the bottle. Some babies probably start to want to hold the bottle by themselves while someone else is holding them, but I would think that not all babies want to.

With my first baby, who was in daycare until 4 mos., the daycare provider actually commented once that he didn't really want to hold his bottle. Which, honestly, he only ever had 2 bottles a day 5 times during the week, so why would he need to?, considering that every other time he was nursing directly. With DS#2, who's never had a bottle(oversupply issues are fixed by not pumping and I am at home with him), I noticed that he doesn't really want to hold his sippy cup up for a long period of time either. He'll use a Nuby sippy cup a bit. They have squishy tops. But he really does best with a regular cup. He takes in more water and drinks upright just like everybody else.

If you think about the muscles that are used when you use a sippy cup, baby has to tip his head way back and hold the cup up for a long time to get any large amount of liquid out. If mom isn't propping a bottle and forcing baby to learn to hold their own bottle, it makes sense that baby doesn't have "those" muscles built up to hold the sippy cup in that way.

I see a couple of solutions to this. #1 Make sure the daycare provider is holding baby for bottles, and don't worry about baby not wanting to do all the work. After all, its not a necessary skill for development. You can just wait for baby to learn to use the sippy cup at their own pace with other liquids, like water. Baby will do it, and you can also try other sippy's to see if baby might like a different one OR#2 Try a regular small plastic cup and teach baby to drink out of the cup like everybody else does. A regular cup doesn't use the same muscles to hold it, and it doesn't require that baby tips his head back to drink. You might find, like we did, that more liquid gets in baby with a regular cup.

Re: Holding bottle

Thanks for that post, Mommie of 2. I just started giving my son the Nuby cup, and he sort of smashes it in his face and chews on the spout. I've noticed that tipping the head back looks so unnatural and uncomfortable. I'm assuming that you held the regular cup while LO drank. I think I'll do that, too.

Re: Holding bottle

Yes. We use a regular cup sometimes too. We also use those cheap cups with plastic lids that were the original sippy cups. They usually come in a pack of 3 or so and are different colors. The cup we have had the most luck with is the Nubby.